Disregarding whether or not the instructor handled the situation properly,
how many of you feel that getting experience in actual IMC during flight
instruction is a bad thing?

I certainly don't, and I've let primary students fly my plane in IMC.
However, quite a few people on this newsgroup argued otherwise. I
don't think their arguments are valid, and I don't think any
experienced instructor would agree with them, but the jury won't be
made up of experienced instructors - it will be made up of non-pilots.

Further, I think that for a student, going up in actual low IMC with
the AVERAGE instructor is a bad thing, and all too likely to get one
killed, because the average CFI, while instrument rated (and possibly a
CFII) is not really qualified to instruct in IMC and quite likely isn't
even qualified to fly IMC himself, FAA certifications notwithstanding.
In other words, the issue is not only that the instructor did not
handle the situation properly, but that there was never a reasonable
expectation that he would.

Instructing in IMC is a lot different from instructing under the hood.
When you're dealing with a competent pilot, it's cake. You sit there,
you scan the instruments, you see that everything is going fine, you
offer the occasional pointer, and you log the time.

When you have a primary student flying his first approach in actual
IMC, it's a lot different. You KNOW he's going to lose it - it's just
a question of when. You're just as much on instruments as if you were
flying yourself, but the airplane is constantly in a bad way - the
student can just barely keep it together. You have to help just enough
to keep him in the game, but not so much that he stops learning. It's
no longer a question of how best to control the airplane, but of how
bad you can let the control get before you have to do something.

If the flight school was simply acting as a plane rental agency,
exercising no control over the instructors (some do operate that way)
and in effect treating them in a way that actually meets the definition
of independent contractor, I would say the suit against the flight
school would be baseless. If it's a more typical operation, it is not.
The suit against the flight instructor is valid in any case, but good
luck collecting anything.

Michael